


Through A Forest Of Wilderness

by WhisperElmwood



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Asexual Character, Asexual Stiles, Drowning, Gen, M/M, Magical Stiles Stilinski, Minor Violence, PTSD Derek, PTSD Stiles, Sex Repulsed Derek Hale, Stiles Has Panic Attacks, Stranded, Wolf Derek, Wolf Derek Hale
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-04-14
Updated: 2014-09-23
Packaged: 2018-01-19 09:43:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 15,360
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1464700
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WhisperElmwood/pseuds/WhisperElmwood
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So. His plane crashed, the pilot died, he lost almost everything to the bottom of the lake, and he's in the middle of nowhere surrounded by trees for as far as the eye can see. He's been visited by one bear already, and a porcupine, he's pretty sure he'd rather not see what else there is. Stiles Stilinski needs to ensure that he survives long enough to be rescued, but winter is coming on fast. And now, suddenly, there's a wolf watching him. A wolf with bright blue eyes, and an uncanny intelligence...</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

**Author's Note:**

> This one's been banging about in my head almost as much as The Hastily Revised Bestiary of Stiles Stilinski (Mage) has, but I finally started getting it down. Some of you may recognize my inspiration for this! 
> 
> Thanks to Emeraldincandescent for the BETA :D

**Prologue**

 

“The clearest way into the Universe is through a forest wilderness.”

― [John Muir](https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/5297.John_Muir)

*

“Dude! I caught one! I fucking caught one! It worked!”

Stiles leaps about, clutching the freshly caught fish on its spear tight in his hands, ecstatic and laughing. The fish wriggles on the spear, but he doesn’t care, just leaps about in the water, soaked to the hips, hair damp and clinging, bare torso gleaming with splashed water.

After a few minutes, he settles down, still grinning and happy, triumphant that his spear works. He’s scared the other fish off now, but that’s fine, he has this one, and now that he knows it works, he can totally come back tomorrow for more. He guts and cleans the fish there, at the riverside, letting the entrails and scales fall into the closed off pool area he’s started making. Hopefully, it’ll attract more fish to the pool, just as he wants.

He collects his meager belongings together and walks back home, eager to eat his first properly cooked meal in days. He doesn’t have anything to dry off with, so he simply lets the sun do it for him as he traipses up the slight incline to camp. He’s developed more freckles than he ever thought he could, since he got here, simply because he can’t really waste clothing. That and he doesn’t have sunscreen.

The fish is large enough that he’s going to have a good meal for once, with the onions he scrounged yesterday for flavor, and the berries he picked this morning for after. He’ll be sleeping with a full stomach tonight and he’s looking forward to it.

It’s as the skin is blackening - he’s so glad his dad took him camping last year, taught him the tricks of stick cooking, so it had been no thing to find a decent forked branch, prepare the coals and set up, slices of onion stuffed inside the fish for flavor - that he hears the wolf.

A long, low, lonely sounding howl fills the air and he looks up.

The largest wolf he has ever seen trots into view on the far side of the clearing he calls home. It’s black from the tips of its ears to the tip of its tail - except for some paler mottling on it’s haunches and slightly fluffier and paler eyebrows. The wolf stares at him, ears perked forward and Stiles stares back.

The staring match goes on for a while, Stiles doesn’t move, only the wolf’s ears twitch slightly, tail moves once. The forest around them slowly fills with the sounds of night birds and insects, waking up and coming out as the sun lowers to the horizon.

He knows this wolf. This is the second time he’s seen it. Him. He recognises the markings on his haunches. He also recognises the eyes. This wolfs eyes are strange, nothing like any other wolf he’s ever seen. They’re bright blue, almost glowing in the twilight.

The fish pops and spits beside him, making him jump, and he turns away, tends the meat so it doesn’t burn. Not that he wouldn’t eat it, even if it was burned.

When he looks up again, when the fish is done and he’s carefully poking the meat to see if it’s cooled enough to eat yet, he sees the wolf is still there. Now though, he’s lying down, long muzzle resting on his forepaws, eyes at half mast under his fluffy brows. He looks like he’s settled in for the night.

Stiles shrugs, tears off a mouthful of fish and chucks it over to the wolf, “Here. Don’t expect more though, you can totally feed yourself, dude.”

The wolf twitches an ear in his direction, stares at him for a long moment more, then shifts forward and snaps up the mouthful of fish. Settles back down again, blinking lazily with an air of satisfaction.

Stiles, now thoughtfully chewing his own mouthful, salutes the wolf with a smile.

*****


	2. Chapter 01

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I am so sorry to anyone who actually knows anything about aircraft. I did my research, but I feel I more than likely got something wrong, somewhere. Also, I beg your indulgence, as this is a fantastical story involving magic, so what happens probably wouldn't in real life, but does here.
> 
> Detailed, spoilery warning at the end notes 
> 
> Thanks to Emeraldincandescent for the BETA :D

**Chapter 01**

 

*

 

Stiles has been itching to get out of Beacon Hills for _years_. And now, just shy of his seventeenth birthday, he's actually doing it!

Ok, so he has to leave his dad and his best friend, Scott, behind to do it, and he's basically just going to stay with Mom's sister for the summer, but thats fine! It's out in the literal middle of nowhere, somewhere he's never even heard of, let alone been to, and that's perfect, as far from small town Beacon Hills as it's possible to be.

It's an absolute wrench to leave his Dad and Scott behind, of course.

But he can do this, he can _totally_ do this. And anyway, it means he’ll have so much stuff to tell them about when he gets back.

"Dude, take lots of photos, ok? I'm jealous, a holiday on your own! I'll miss you so much!" Scott wraps him in the biggest, tightest hug and he laughs, hugs him back just as tight, claps him on the back. This'll be the first time they've been apart since fourth grade, he'd be lying if he said he wasn't a little sad. He shakes it away, grips Scott even tighter for a moment.

"Like you'll have _time_ to miss me, dude." He pulls back and waggles his eyebrows suggestively, grins expansively, "Don't do anything I wouldn't do."

Scott goes to cuff him over the head, "Oh my _god_ , dude, don't. Alison's totally not like that."

Stiles just ducks, laughs. Alison is Scott’s new girlfriend, and she’s more than a little bit scary when she’s not hiding it all under the persona of the sweetest girl he’s ever met. "Right," he says a touch dubiously. Considering Scott had called him in excitement after sleeping with her the first time, Stiles is pretty damn sure she is 'like that'.

"If you two are quite done? I'd like to say goodbye to my son."

Scott steps away, grinning, slipping his hands into his pockets, and this time Stiles is wrapped up in his dad's strong, steady arms.

"I'm gonna miss you, kid. Don't forget me."

"Dad! It's only six weeks, I'll be home before you know it." Like he could forget his dad, the very idea is _beyond_ absurd.

"You realize, I already got Scott and Ms. McCall in on making sure you eat right while I'm gone, so there's no point buttering me up now!"

His dad just laughs at that and holds him tighter.

They break apart after a long, long, tight moment and his dad ruffles his close cropped hair. "Just make sure you come back. And say hi to your aunt and uncle for me. It's nice of them to do this."

"Just _call_ them, already, anyone'd think you hate them. And I won't get there for _hours_ yet, anyway.” He pauses, “Oh _god_ , I'mma die of boredom on this flight." Stiles drops to a crouch, goes frantically through his carry-on, making sure he has everything he'll need. Crossword book, e-reader, notebook, pencil case, mp3 player, magazine, 3DS, snacks - a hand drops on his shoulder, stilling him mid frantic-scrabble.

"Stiles, you'll be fine."

He gives his dad a tight smile, closes the bag and makes himself get up, "Yeah, ok. But why do they have to live so _far away_ , ugh."

Dad just chuckles, shaking his head as he pulls something from his pocket, "Here, I wanted to give you this before you board. I know it's not - well. Here."

His dad hands him a brand new pocket knife, one of the complicated swiss ones with a billion unidentifiable contraptions, it's all classic red and shining steel. Stiles stares at it, then laughs, "Dude, I'm not going to be living in a _forest_. They're rural, but not _that_ rural."

His dad rolls his eyes and smiles, "Just in case. Come here." Stiles lets himself be wrapped up in his dad’s arms again, "Thanks Dad. It's great, _really_."

He catches sight of Scott rolling his eyes but smiling hugely over his dad’s shoulder.

\---

There's next to no interference as Stiles heads to the actual plane, because it's just a small, privately owned cargo plane. He's basically hitching a lift with the mail and supplies for the tiny town his mom's family owns.

It's all very exciting, actually. He enthusiastically greets every member of airport staff he sees, not that there's many at this backwater little place, getting a mixed bag of responses in return. No one stops him anywhere, he just gets directed straight to the correct small aircraft.

The pilot herself actually finds him when he wanders onto the tarmac.

"You'll be the Stilinski kid?"

She looks happy, all smile lines, twinkling eyes and greying hair. He likes her immediately. She grips his hand in a very firm handshake. "There's not much in the way of comfort, I'm afraid. This flights mostly just for _stuff_. You get to sit up front with me, though."

"Really? But that's awesome!"

She twinkles at him even more after that.

Standing on the tarmac by the little set of steps to the door a few minutes later, Stiles turns back to look for his family. It takes a moment, but he finds them, at one of the large windows, waving enthusiastically.

He waves back, big grin on his face, then clambers aboard. He puts his luggage in back, carefully slotting it amongst all the crates and sacks, then goes up front, where the pilot, ("Call me Miranda!") is strapping in and checking the console, fiddling with what are probably very important dials and switches.

As he slides into the passenger/co-pilot seat, the door slams closed behind him, the whole aircraft rattles. He maybe startles a little, dropping his rucksack, hadn’t realized someone was out there ready to lock up.

"Just getting us cleared. Take a seat. Don’t touch anything that looks important."

Stiles grins and straps himself in, careful to make sure everything's correct. He stuffs his rucksack between his feet, avoiding what looks like pedals, stretching his long legs out to see how much space he has and looks for his dad and Scott again.

They're still at the window, watching and waiting.

As the engines start, Stiles waves again.

\---

"What?!" Stiles startles, badly, going straight from sleep to waking in an instant. The crack and rumble of thunder that had woken him is still rattling around the aircraft.

He stares out the front windows, watches through the ripples and rivulets of water on the panes as a bolt of lightning shocks across the sky ahead of them, lighting everything enough that he can see roiling purple-black clouds, torrents of rain. Not even seconds later, white blobs still dancing in his vision, a roll of thunder rumbles around them, so loud he can feel it in his bones.

It looks like they're in _hell_.

"Not to worry, kid. I've flown through worse."

He gives Miranda an incredulous look as she grins at him, digs his fingers into the arms of his seat, knuckles going pale. He’s flown before, of course, never really been worried about turbulence, but this is _way_ beyond a few bumps in the air. He feels like the plane is being battered on every side, like an army of invisible bastards are each taking a sledgehammer to the panels.

"We're a _touch_ off course; I tried to skirt around the storm, as we really shouldn’t be flying so close. Didn't work, but we'll be fine."

Miranda actually doesn’t look worried, which helps, a little. Stiles blinks at her, nods. He doesn’t relax his grip on the armrests, but he does sit back again, tries to untense his shoulders, his back. It doesn’t work.

“Oh-kay,” he mumbles, eyes still wide as he watches the sheets of rain sliding down the windows, the cracks of lightning all around them.

He tries to ignore the rolling thunder, the cracks of lightning, and his gaze fixates on the rain. He stares at the window next to him, watches the water sliding down the glass. His heart is hammering in his chest, harder than it has in a while.

As he stares, trying to close his jumbled thoughts off from the storm raging around them, his eyes unfocus. His head becomes foggy, and a pressure builds in his ears, not unlike that time he swam to the very bottom of the pool on a dare.

Suddenly his chest tightens, he stops breathing. The water on the window pane fills his vision, wet darkness enveloping him. He can't breathe and he starts to panic.

He's in darkness, absolute, cold, cloying darkness. He spins around, movements slow, uncoordinated and then looks up. Far, far above him, he can see a light, shifting and wavering like a heat haze. The pressure in his head spreads to the rest of his body and he kicks, suddenly, climbing upward.

The pressure grows and grows, his fingers scramble, and he fights his body's desire for air, fights it tooth and claw, knows it will kill him if he breathes, even as his lungs scream at him.

It's a losing battle and suddenly he's taking in huge lungfuls of water, staring at the light far above him, reaching for it, feet kicking uselessly as the water turns to fire, burning its way down his throat, into his lungs.

It burns, it burns so bad, but he keeps fighting, pushing up, reaching for the rippling light above. His fingers break the surface and -

He gasps, reality shunting back into place around him. He's not in the water, he's fine, they're still in the air. He looks around, taking everything in, fingers still gripping the armrests hard enough to hurt.

His heart is still pattering madly in his chest and he doesn't understand what just happened. Miranda doesn't seem to have noticed anything, so he tries, again, to relax. He briefly closes his eyes, concentrates on his breathing, unlocks his fingers from the armrests.

He opens his eyes at the exact moment a crack of lightning shocks across the sky, hitting the aircraft. Stiles almost swallows his tongue as the airplane lurches.

“Ah, _crap_.” Miranda makes some frantic moves and he has no idea what she’s doing, but she’s muttering, one hand moving over the buttons and switches in a complicated dance as she controls the flight. Stiles watches in mute horror as the lights and dials on the instrument panel flicker, as thunder rolls around the sky.

“Nothing to worry about, Stiles. Aircraft get hit by lightning all the time. We’ve got safeguards built in.” Miranda gives him a reassuring smile, and Stiles just nods, taking in the fact that everything’s working again. The turbulence is still making his stomach turn, though.

He listens with half an ear as Miranda calls the nearest Air Traffic Control to report that their craft was struck by lightning and that they’re shifting course a little in an attempt to avoid repeats. He takes reassurance in the fact that she doesn’t sound worried, and that the official language takes all the urgency out of it.

The steady sound of rain on the body of the aircraft wraps around him like white noise.

\---

Almost twenty minutes after the first, another crack of lightning hits the aircraft. The whole craft lurches again, shuddering and dropping suddenly and Stiles yelps, clinging hard to the armrests. Miranda swears vociferously, tugging what he thinks is the steering wheel to keep the craft on course as the electronics crap out completely.

“You buckled in there, kid?” Miranda asks, voice tight as her hand flies over switches and dials again, barely even looking at him as she holds the aircraft steady.

“Y-yeah,” Stiles checks his seatbelt anyway, making sure, just as the electronics come back on again, flickering back to life in stops and starts.

Miranda taps a finger on one of the panel-screens on the dashboard, a frown marring her features, before she grabs the radio mike. Stiles half listens, half silently panics, as she radios in that they’ve been struck again, that their course has shifted and she can’t tell by quite how much due to a systems failure.

Stiles stares out the window, feeling his heart in his throat, his pulse pounding. The clouds around them look _weird_ , shifting and swirling, almost like they’re alive. A crack of lightning shoots past the nose of the aircraft and he nearly bites his tongue. _Is lightning supposed to be blue?_ He looks at Miranda, but she’s still concentrating on radioing in their position, her voice momentarily drowned out by the thunder rolling around the skies.

Another crack of lightning just misses them again, and Stiles starts to recite the periodic table in his head, attempting to calm down as the turbulence worsens, as thunder rumbles around the sky again. He _really_ doesn’t think lightning should be _blue_.

“Hang on kid. If things get worse, we may have to ditch, ok? I don’t _think_ it’ll get that bad, but just in case.” Miranda’s voice is calm, if a little tight, and Stiles just nods, feeling the panic rise further. “Make sure you’re strapped in good and tight, ok?”

Stiles checks his belt again, fingers uncoordinated as he tries not to panic.

Another crack of blue lightning flashes past, then another and another, a quick succession of brilliant light, leaving strobing blobs in Stiles’ vision that he tries to blink away. Thunder rolls around them almost constantly and Miranda swears again, picks up the radio mike. She speaks rapid fire using a lot of jargon Stiles doesn’t catch, doesn’t understand what he does catch, and before they can get a reply another crack of lightning lights up the sky and it hits the plane.

Everything happens at once. The plane lurches, the sudden shift so abrupt that Stiles bites his tongue, can taste blood in his mouth. Everything electronic shorts out at the same time and a crack Stiles hears makes him jolt, stare at Miranda in shock.

_Miranda hit the window_. A trickle of blood makes its way down the pane as Stiles stares at her, her head hanging too far forward for her to be awake.

He watches in renewed horror as the steering wheel thing jerks and the plane lurches downward, his stomach dropping with it. Miranda’s hand drops from the steering wheel as the plane coasts left and he has _no idea_ why it’s turning. He just legitimately has _no idea_ what is steering the plane. For a moment he watches as her hand swings loosely, near the floor, then panic takes over and he jerks in his own belt.

“ _Shit_. Oh god, oh _god_ , what do I _do_.” Stiles reaches over, shakes her shoulder, but her head just nods, she hangs in her seat belt, completely lifeless. His chest hurts, his breathing labored as he looks frantically around.

“What do I do, _what do I do_!” He pushes two fingers into her neck and she’s still alive, pulse fluttering, but the plane is coasting, they’re even further off course than they were, there’s no electronics and he _doesn’t know how to steer_.

He makes a grab for his own steering wheel, pulls it and the nose of the plane goes up again, he remembers _that_ much about flying, but he thinks they’re still moving left, has no idea what to do about it. Are they even level? He can’t tell, he can’t see the horizon! None of the dials or guages are working!

He can feel a full panic attack building. He hasn’t had one in a while, but now, he can feel it. His heart is pounding, his head hurts, he can’t breathe.

Before he can think, a blue-purple crack of lightning shears through the air ahead of them and strikes the plane. For a second everything stops. The whole universe pauses.

Then they’re falling.

 

*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: The aircraft that Stiles gets into is struck by lightning many times and they crash, with all the violence that this entails, the pilot is knocked unconscious and Stiles is left alone in the cockpit with no idea of how to prevent the crash


	3. Chapter 02

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Many reading may have picked up on what AU this is, so I'll just say it: This is a Hatchet!AU, with magic and werewolves thrown in. I had to teach the book at work, and the idea just got stuck in my head, so here it is.
> 
> Detailed, spoilery warning at the end notes
> 
> Thanks to Emeraldincandescent for the BETA :D

**Chapter 02**

  
*

Sheet rain is almost blinding him as Stiles pulls himself from the water, hands and knees sliding and sticking in the sodden mud, heavy jeans and layers of shirts weighing him down, slowing his movements further. He gets halfway out when he has to stop, turns a little to peer over his shoulder, looking for what’s holding him back. He tugs and tugs at a weed that's become wrapped around his ankle, finally breaks it with a sob and a scramble that results with him on his ass in foot deep muddy water, sinking into the mud below.  
  
Lightning streaks across the sky far above him, lighting the world around him in strobe effects, just enough to see which way the shore is closest and he moves.  
  
He tries to get to his feet, but the mud is thick and slick, giving way beneath him and sucking at his boots, dropping him back to hands and knees. The rain continues, unrelenting, thunder rumbling around the sky and he fights back panic at every bone rattling barrage of sound, struggles through the mud and the water and the clinging weeds.  
  
It takes forever, but he makes it to more solid ground, trailing mud and grass and leaves and weeds as he does. He pauses, worn out, dropping to the ground, just managing to keep his face from hitting the grass, not caring about the downpour of rain still soaking him, and that’s when he starts to register the pain. Every single muscle in his body aches; his neck feels stiff, his head is pounding with the worst headache he has ever experienced, his shoulder is burning, something’s wrong with his ankle and he’s shaking so badly he’s scared to even think about standing up again.  
  
A wave of nausea washes over him, suddenly and he pushes himself up to hands and knees just in time, as his stomach lurches and he throws up. He coughs and gasps and throws up again and again, until nothing is coming up but bile and even then his stomach keeps cramping. He thinks he’s crying, sobbing wetly, but the rain is still pouring so he pretends he’s not.  
  
Another crack of lightning shows him that there are trees nearby, almost hidden by the rain and the gloom and knowing that if he stays where he is, he’s certain to die, he pushes past the pain, the fear, the panic and forces himself to his feet. Everything hurts and his limbs are weak, shaky, but he manages it.  
  
It takes long minutes of slow stumbling steps, but he makes it to the tree line and grabs the nearest trunk for support. He needs to find somewhere dry, or _drier_. He sobs again, a hacking sound, punched out of him, that rings in his ears as he pulls in more air, his chest sore, heart yammering madly behind his breastbone. He thinks he tears a nail as he grips the rough tree bark, then pushes away, ignores it, he doesn’t have the energy to care right now.  
  
After long, slow, wet minutes, pushing from tree to tree, moving deeper into the woodland where the rain still pours but is less torrential, Stiles finally finds a tree with low hanging, ground sweeping branches. He drops to his knees again, crawls until he finds a gap, and then pushes through and under.  
  
Inside, the space is actually dry and he can’t help it, he laughs brokenly in relief. The tree is some sort of pine, and there is a bed of dropped needles around the trunk, under the branches, prickly but not painful. He gets in as far as he can, then tugs his outer layers off. The hoody comes away easily enough, but the plaid shirt stretches and clings hard before it finally gives way and he drops it away from his body. He struggles with his jeans for a moment, before giving up.  
  
He allows himself to lie down and curls in on himself, wrapping his arms tight around his torso, knees tucked up close to his chest. He finally gives in to the sobbing, his whole body shivering and shaking as he lets what happened to him overwhelm him. He’s alone. He’s in pain. He’s scared.  
  
He passes out to the sound of his terrified crying and the white noise of the continuing rain.  
  
\---  
  
 _Screaming_. Someone’s screaming.  
  
It’s so _loud_. Insistent.  
  
The world crashes, lurches, long moments of weightlessness in between. There’s a sound like a soda can being crushed in a fist, only a thousand times louder. He loses track of which way is up. Pain flares up his leg, through his head.  
  
For a long, long, silent moment, everything is still, black. There’s nothing at all, and he’s floating freely, not even the screaming breaking through the silence.  
  
Stiles’ eyes snap open and he’s hanging sideways and forwards in his seat, staring down at Miranda. Her window is smashed and there’s water pouring in. He thinks it's just rain at first, then realizes it can't be. There’s just too much of it.  
  
He reaches out, everything glacially slow, touches the pilot’s neck. He whimpers, coughs on a sob, clenches his teeth.  
  
Water touches his right foot, seeps into his boot and he panics. He can’t get his fingers to work. They slide and scrabble, don’t grip. Can’t grip. He can’t get the buckle loose and suddenly someone’s screaming again.  
  
\---  
  
Stiles jerks awake, coming to awareness in seconds, the nightmare fading as he does. He rolls a little, stretches his sore limbs, his sore neck, the plethora of sharp and aching pains doing more to wake him up than he’d ever thought possible. The persistent gnawing sensation in his belly tells him he hasn’t eaten for far too long, and that throwing up hasn’t helped.  
  
For a moment, he can’t figure out where he is or why he’s so hungry, why his body aches, or even why he remembers throwing up. Then it all comes crashing back in on him, the nightmare returns and it’s suddenly _memory_ and he’s rolling to his hands and knees, retching again.  
  
His stomach is empty and he only burns his throat with bile, coughing and wiping his mouth and wishing for water to rinse the flavor away. His limbs are shaking and heart beating too hard and he swallows back another sob, pushes it down and away, forcing it below his sternum where it can’t bother him right now. He’s hungry, dehydrated, he doesn’t have the time to cry again.  
  
Everything _hurts_. He moves slowly, stiffly, trying to lessen the pain in any way he can.  
  
He touches his hoody and finds it still wet, cold and clammy on his fingers, the thicker material simply holding the water it had soaked in. His flannel shirt is the same. So he’s stuck in just his t-shirt, the material still damp but not as cold. His jeans are a lost cause, still damp and stiff and caked in mud, uncomfortable to move in, but he can’t take them off, his fingers are too clumsy, his limbs too shaky, to fight with belt and button and zipper.  
  
Giving up on getting anything dry, Stiles crawls over to the gap in the branches, in search of nearby water at the very least. He remembers that a person can go on much longer without food than without water, and he’s already feeling pinched and thirsty.  
  
His ankle is killing him, he must have wrenched it getting out of the cockpit - his shoulder, too. It makes moving harder than it should be, and he can’t put weight on his ankle without wanting to scream, so he stays on his knees as he pushes through the branches and looks out.  
  
The air is damp, warm, and full of insects.  
  
He crawls further and then, grabbing the branches for support, wincing as his torn nail makes itself known, lifts himself to his good ankle. He walked on both after the crash, after getting out of the water, which must have made things worse, and he doesn’t have painkillers or anything to wrap it with. His body shakes with fatigue and pain, but he doesn’t let himself give up.  
  
Staying still, he looks around, looking for anything that may hold water. Something close enough that he won't risk further damage. As he does, insects descend and before even a minute has passed, he’s been bitten so many times he loses count. He waves his arms, trying to swat the creatures out of the air, but they just land on him, bite him again and again and he’s soon covered in more bites than he’s ever suffered in his whole life put together. His arms, his neck, even his _face_ , covered with sore, stinging, itchy bites and he can feel them all swelling.  
  
“Fuck off!” He yells, voice ringing out, a little shaky, scratchy from screaming, but still strong, echoing around the trees, anger getting the better of him. “Just fuck off and die!”  
  
The insects are gone. He blinks, wipes tiny bodies from his arms and shakes his head, forces himself not to scratch at the many, many bites on his bare skin. “Better,” he mutters, then begins a slow, careful, painful walk to what looks like a promising, large leafed tree.  
  
The tree turns out to be a good bet, and he finds enough leaves bent and folded in the right way that they’re holding some water. He rinses his mouth and drinks what he finds, what he can reach, tries not to scratch at the itchy bites and then, when his body has finally had enough, the shaking getting stronger and stronger the longer he forces himself to stand, he heads back to the low-hanging tree.  
  
He slides back inside, lays down, and promptly passes back out again.  
  
\---  
  
Water rises around his legs, up and up and up, rising and crashing around his hips, then his waist. The screaming’s driving him mad, someone needs to stop it.  
  
The whole world tilts suddenly, a grating, tearing, screeching sound of metal coming apart and he chokes on a gasp, bites his tongue again, and the aircraft shifts, falls, crashing down, the cockpit level again. But now water’s pouring in his window too, and it’s rising fast and there’s no way out.  
  
The buckle clicks loose and he slides right out of the seat, into the rising water. Coughing, spluttering, he swallows a mouthful of the disgusting stuff and realizes the screaming was _him_. He looks at the door to the back of the plane, sees it crumpled and realizes there’s no way he could open it.  
  
His head hurts, his throat hurts, he can’t think. He looks frantically around, shocks to a stop when he sees Miranda’s dead eyes, staring at him from just below the rising surface of the murky water.  
  
“No. No, no no no..” He flings himself away, at the window, water cascading around him, rising up his chest. There’s already a crack, he can widen it, pull it open. It’s wide enough. He’ll fit. He _has_ to fit.  
  
He grips and tugs and pulls at the window, slices his palm open and swears. Gives up with his hands and leans back, kicks and kicks and pushes with his feet instead.  
  
\---  
  
“No!” Stiles jerks awake, fingers wrapped tight in his own t-shirt, heart racing a mile a minute and he can’t _breathe_. The branches above him, around him, waver and spin, the whole world tilts and flips and he screws his eyes closed, nausea rising in waves, convulsing through his stomach.  
  
He pushes his head into the prickly needles, trying to concentrate on anything but the way he can’t catch his breath, the way his throat feels like it’s closing up. His heart feels like it’s going to burst from his chest, he’s drenched in sweat, body flushing hot and cold.  
  
“No, no no no no, please, no,” he’s sobbing again, choked wet gasps around labored breaths. He’s shaking so hard he knows he’s going to be even more sore later, if he survives, if he doesn’t die right here, right now.  
  
He’s hyperventilating, having a panic attack, he knows it, but there's nothing he can do about it. He can’t fight it back, can’t hold it off. His fingers go numb and he presses himself into the bed of needles.  
  
\---  
  
 _He can’t breathe_. He can’t breathe and the cockpit’s full of water and the window’s still not wide enough and he’s going to _die in a lake in the middle of nowhere and his dad is going to be so sad and they’ll never find him and there’ll be no one to look after Scotty and his dad and oh god_.  
  
He takes one last gulp of air as the water fills the last inches in the cockpit and levels one final kick at the window. The water engulfs him completely and he scrabbles at the glass and suddenly it’s free and the gap's wide enough. The plane’s still sinking, the water equalised in the cockpit, but it’s wide enough to get out now.  
  
He goes head first, has to squeeze and wriggle his shoulders through, catches on something as he does, pulling him suddenly left, but he tugs and wrenches and gets free.  
  
His chest is _burning_ , his whole body screaming for air, but he clenches his teeth and lips closed, pulls his hips through the window, kicks out, puts his feet on the crumpled siding of the craft and pushes away and up with all his strength.  
  
He kicks and kicks, pulls himself through the water, arms and legs lethargic, too slow, his head pounding and chest ready to burst. He needs to breathe, _he needs to breathe_!  
  
Stiles’ fingers break the surface.  
  
\---  
  
Stiles startles awake, fingers grasping at the bed of needles, tiny pin pricks in his hand. His breathing is labored again, his heart hammering away. His chest hurts, his head is pounding and he knows he’s on his way to another panic attack, but he’s already so tired, his body not having had a chance yet to regain any strength, to properly rest. He’s gone from crashing, to drowning, to panic attack and had no time in between.  
  
Passing out doesn’t count.  
  
He refuses to let another panic attack overwhelm him. He starts using the calming and breathing techniques he was taught after his mother died. The therapist had been very patient and managed to ingrain the techniques into him, so he falls back on them with determination.  
  
It takes a long, long time, and he’s exhausted when he’s finally calm, his whole body aching, but he does it. He manages to stay awake and aware and the wave of dizziness and nausea passes and that means he can do it again if another panic attacks comes on. He’s not going to be held prisoner to them.  
  
A howl breaks through his thoughts, a long, low, lonely sound that echoes weirdly around the trees. Stiles blinks and shifts, pushes the branches aside as another howl sounds, the renewed rain oddly muffling it, sending a shiver down his spine.  
  
There’s no answering howl, so the wolf must be alone. Stiles hasn’t read much about wolves, but he’s pretty sure lone wolves are bad, however lonely and sad that howl sounded. Stiles decides he needs to find a more secure place to sleep until rescue comes. Somewhere with walls, maybe. Somewhere near food, if he can find it. He gathers his hoody and shirt together, drapes the shirt over his head against the rain and crawls back out.  
  
The sun is low, somewhere behind the clouds, and the rain is heavy but nowhere near as bad as the storm that seems to have moved on. He’s intensely grateful that he won’t be jumping at thunderclaps anymore, he’s not sure his body could take more sudden tensing and panic.  
  
He heads first to the tree with the large leaves, drinking his fill and trying not to put weight on his ankle. His thirst hasn’t abated by much, but the rain water takes the edge off at least. When he’s ready, he heads back to the lake side. The rain has washed away any traces of his route out, and he doesn’t really remember where he climbed out anyway, but the lake is easy enough to find.  
  
He stands in silence when he gets there.  
  
Through the rain and the gloom, he can see the hulking shape of the airplane. It’s body is almost torn in half, front half nose down in the lake, back half almost completely under the water now, wings gone. It’s too far away to make out any details, even if it was bright out, but he can see gaping holes in the fuselage, dark smudges against the pale grey of the sidings. The packages Miranda had been delivering must still be in there, or maybe in the lake itself by now. And his own luggage, too.  
  
When he’s ready, maybe he can swim out and see what he can find.  
  
But he’s not even _nearly_ ready, yet. The very idea of going near the shattered plane, of getting in the water, has his chest feeling tight, his breathing picking up. He shakes himself, lets out a long breath.  
  
Stiles turns away from the plane and heads right, around the edge of the lake, leaving the crumpled remains of the aircraft behind him.  
  
He’s not sure how long he walks, but it’s slow going and painful. Eventually, the rain lets up and trickles to a stop and Stiles pauses to look around again. Slowly the heat rises and he can hear the buzz of insects in the distance. He doesn’t question it, only shakes out his hoody and shirt, folds them for easier carrying.  
  
As he folds the hoody, he feels a lump and investigates. The pockets are deep and amazingly, he finds, amongst a jumble of other random things, a handful of hard candy in individual sealed wrappers. He remembers picking them up from a bowl in the airport cafeteria, before…  
  
Stiles unwraps one and pops it in his mouth. The taste, after so long without food, is like an explosion on his tongue. Sugar and sweetness and artificial cherry flavor. He sighs, savors it, forces himself to let it lie on his tongue instead of sucking or chewing. He needs it to last.  
  
The little surge of sugar is a helpful boost and he starts moving again. He stays near the lake, and it’s huge, bigger than he first thought, he can’t see the plane anymore. The trees are a mix, now that he can see them clearly, though he still doesn’t know what’s what - he recognises the white and patchy bark of paper bark birch trees but that’s it.  
  
The sun is already beginning to touch the tree tops when he finally finds something that could work.  
  
Stiles steps out of a thicker patch of trees he had had to go through after skirting a large rock, swearing all the way, and finds himself in a small clearing. He blinks and looks around. On the far side and to his left, closer to the lake, a very large cliff rises. The clearing is around the base of it, the top rising from the trees, on the same level as the highest branches. It looks like an easy walk up, as well.  
  
At the base of the cliff, where earth and soil has washed away over time, he can see a cave. Not very big, more of a scoop into the rock than anything, but…  
  
Stiles moves into the clearing, looking around for any signs of anything else using the area, sees nothing and heads straight for the cave. Rain starts to patter down again as he reaches it and he takes this as incentive to get inside.  
  
It’s almost as high as he is tall, meaning he can stand, but with a bit of a stoop, inside and it’s deeper than he first thought. He moves further in and finds it dry, if a touch clammy after all the rain. Scraping away some leaf litter from the floor, Stiles sits down, carefully placing his hoody and shirt to one side, hugs his knees to his chest and looks around.  
  
“Well… I guess this’ll do, then.”

  
*

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Warnings: panic attacks, near drowning, death, throwing-up, fear, horror. Stiles nearly drowns escaping from the plane after it crashes, Miranda does not survive but is dead before they hit the water. Subsequently, Stiles throws up and has nightmares and panic attacks.


	4. Chapter 03

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This took a little longer to get up than intended, because I went on vacation and then got ill D: Sorry
> 
> Thanks to Emeraldincandescent for the BETA :D

Chapter 03

 

*

 

Stiles shivers himself awake at the break of dawn, nightmare fading as his heart beat races, his breath still a little short. A shaft of sunlight falls over his face, making him blink and groan, attempt to roll over to get away from it. Bird calls and the buzz of insects confuse him for a moment, until he stretches and the pain in, well, _every single part of his body_ , jolts him back to reality.

He lies still, heart beat slowly going back to somewhat normal, not really knowing what to do with himself, listening to the birds and the insects, feeling the clammy cold of the packed dirt beneath him. He has a vague recollection that sleeping directly on the floor isn’t a good idea. Which makes sense, considering he’s still shivering and the arm and leg he slept on feel cold, clammy and numb.

He stares out at the clearing, watching as the sun crests the tree tops completely and starts steaming away the dew, stealing into the cave and warming his skin a little as it does. Mist curls around the grass and the weeds as the sun heats everything up. It’s quite beautiful really, almost as if he’s watching ghosts or faeries dance in the long grasses. He wishes he weren’t alone, for a moment, that he had someone to share this experience with.

Then he abruptly feels guilty. He doesn’t want anyone else here with him, because that would mean someone else would have to have gone through everything he’s gone through, and he really doesn’t wish this on anyone. Not even the giant douchebag Jackson, and Jackson’s the kind of asshole Stiles wishes all the unfortunate circumstances on.

It’s the growling and discomfort from his stomach that eventually forces Stiles out of his stupor. He rolls onto his ass, sits up, limbs stiff, neck aching and looks around. He slept fairly well, having drifted off into a real sleep while watching the rain last night, so he feels a little better now. He’s also dry, which proves the cave was a good idea, and his jeans, though still caked in mud, are a lot more comfortable now. He runs his fingers over his hoody and shirt, where he had left them folded together and finds them both still slightly damp, however.

“Welp,” he sighs, “I’m not gonna be here forever, but I _do_ need food. Let’s go find some.”

His voice sounds weird, shocking to his ears, in the near-silence of the woods.

He rolls to his knees, staggers onto his good ankle and bends to pick up the hoody and shirt. After some thought, and watching the sky, he decides to spread both on the rocks around the cave to see if the sun will dry them off any quicker. The bright red of the hoody should be a good marker to lead him back here, too.

He moves out into the clearing, attempting to stretch his sore, stiff muscles. He winces and gives up entirely with his neck, figuring he’s got whiplash and shouldn’t fuck with it too much. His ankle is still sore, swollen and radiating an angry heat. He pokes and prods at it, flinching as he does, and doesn’t think anything’s broken, just wrenched, sprained. With no bandages, ice or pain killers, he’s just going to have to live with it and try not to make it worse.

He finds a handy tree to hide behind to pee, even though he’s alone, which leaves him contemplating exactly what to do about going to the toilet out here. Remembers something about digging holes and not being too close to water sources, pushes the thoughts away for now.

He rubs absently at his belly as he uses leaf-water to swallow one of his precious Adderall from the sheet he stashed in his pocket before even leaving the house, like he always does before an extended trip. The gnawing hunger is much stronger now that he’s moving, a feeling he’s never actually had to deal with before. It’s maybe been a day and a half since the actual crash, and he’s never really gone that long without eating before. He looks around, and decides to move deeper into the trees, rubs at the bites on his arms in an attempt to stop the itching without actually scratching and making things worse.

He frowns and pauses, looks at the bites on his arms, then up and around the clearing. He can _hear_ insects, buzzing and chirping, all around him and at a steady distance, but not a single insect has come anywhere near him. He can’t even _see_ any, and he knows, _knows_ , that in a place like this, with damp earth and right near a lake, there should be biters absolutely everywhere.

Something uncomfortable uncurls inside him, makes him shiver as he looks around. He doesn’t understand why he’s not getting bitten.

A much louder growl from his stomach has him moving again, though. He pushes the issue to one side, to think about later, when he’s eaten and drunk some more water, maybe made some sort of progress on being rescued.

Maybe the bugs just don’t like the taste of him?

\---

The first thing he finds, after maybe ten minutes of shuffling his way up the gentle slope into the forest, is a patch of mushrooms growing on a fallen, soft, moss covered tree. He stands and looks at them for a while, assessing the shape and color of them, then shakes his head, turns away. As much as he loves mushrooms, and he _really_ does, he is no expert in which ones could kill him. So he decides to give them a wide birth, not risk it in the slightest.

Nearby, he finds a long, straight and sturdy stick, almost as tall as he is. He picks it up, examines it a little, it feels good in his hands, like it belongs there; after a moment he shrugs and starts using it to help him walk. It takes the pressure off both his ankles, makes moving a little easier, and if he needs to, he can totally poke things or even hit things with it. When he’s rescued, he’ll take it home with him, put it on the wall and declare it the most useful thing he’s ever found and that it needs remembrance for playing it's part in this whole adv- _thing_.

He shakes his head at himself and nearly misses a patch of onions he’s actually now aware he’s been able to smell for the past ten minutes.

“Oh good gods, _food_ ,” he stands and stares at the patch for a moment, taking in what he’s actually seeing - and smelling. Lots of tall thin, tube-like leaves, interspersed with shorter, smaller ones, ranging far and wide between the trees, the patch absolutely enormous. He is suddenly so, so grateful that his dad insisted on taking him camping every summer, on showing him the edible wild plants, how to fish and even catch small game. At the time he’d thought it was useless, that he’d never need it, but now...

A patch of wild onions isn’t exactly a meal, but right at this moment, his body doesn’t care. He carefully gets to his knees and finds a large plant, tears off a couple leaves to chew while he digs up the bulb. His mouth waters and his stomach rumbles and he can’t eat the damn things fast enough, they’re sharp and fresh and absolutely perfect.

It’s messy and he gets covered in soil and leaf litter, earth pushing up under his nails, caking his hands to the wrists, but Stiles doesn’t care. A few inches below the surface, he finds a decent sized bulb, nothing so large as the things you get in a supermarket, but that’s fine, these are wild and exactly what he expects.

With a little pinch and a twist that his dad taught him, years ago, he manages to get the roots separated from the bulb itself and pushes them back into the hole. He covers it over and then sits back, picking off the outer, soil covered layers of skins.

With a contented sigh, he bites into the bulb. He’s never been a fan of raw onion, but right now, he’s hungry enough to eat an entire _bushel_ of the damn things.

When’s he’s finished eating the bulb, he looks for another big one, and digs it up. This one he plans to take with him while looking for other foods. He brushes the soil off it, pushes the roots back into the ground and then climbs laboriously to his feet. His stomach isn’t yelling at him anymore, and he feels a little more energized, but he really thinks he needs more than onions to eat, he’s pretty sure that would leave him feeling ill after a day or two. Not that he'll be here long enough for that to happen, anyway.

His thoughts skitter around rescue for a moment, he’s certain to be rescued within a couple days, tops. Because, really, who _loses_ an _entire_ airplane? The onion patch is great and all, but he’ll be gone soon anyway. Right?

His thoughts abort, scatter and he shakes his head, makes note of the onion patch’s location and moves away.

\---

He’s finished the second onion by the time he comes across a handful of red-berried trees. He’s no longer desperately hungry, and he’s feeling a bit less worried about food in general now that he know’s there’s a whole field of onions he can eat if he needs to, so he looks at the trees skeptically instead of rushing straight in and eating something.

Stiles carefully moves to the nearest tree, taking in the ripe, delicious looking berries and reaches out to pick one. His hand tingles a little before he even touches anything, so he drops it and frowns at the tree. The berries do look really good, even if he can’t tell what they actually are, but…

He picks a berry before he can think better of it and sniffs at it. Something twists below his rib cage, something he’s never felt before, something scary, hot and writhing, like a warning and he drops the berry as if burned.

“Ohhh-kay. No to the berries, then.”

He blinks at the trees a few times, then squares his shoulders, turns and keeps going. He has _onions_ , he doesn’t need suspicious tingly tree fruits.

What he finds instead absolutely makes up for the loss of the delicious looking berries. A huge, truly _enormous_ , bramble patch. It’s late enough in the summer that there are actually berries available and he grins at nothing, maybe the universe, because he freaking _loves_ blackberries.

He makes his way closer and not even caring about his muddy fingers, he starts to eat his fill. It’s messy, as always with blackberries, juices staining his skin pink and purple, but they’re sweet and tangy and absolutely fantastic. He catches his fingers and wrists on thorns a few times, but quickly learns how to avoid the sharp little nuisances and just keeps eating.

When he’s finally, _finally_ satisfied, he finds himself wondering how he can carry some back to the cave for later. It’s been hard work getting out here with his stupid ankle. But he doesn’t have any idea how to do it right now, his jeans are way too stiff to put any in his pockets and there’s nothing he can use as a bag of some sort.

He sits and rests in a patch of sunlight for a while, letting his now happy-grumbling instead of hungry-grumbling stomach settle. The forest is quiet around him, except for the distant buzzing of insects and the ever-present calls of birds. Gentle winds sigh through the branches above him and he can just make out, between the criss-crossing branches and leaves, stupidly fluffy looking clouds skimming across the bright blue of the sky.

It’s almost idyllic. Except for the whole ‘he’s on his own, in pain and foraging for food after surviving a plane crash’ thing.

With a sigh, Stiles gets back to his feet, collects a last handful of blackberries for the walk, and heads back the way he came.

\---

The walk back downhill, even as gentle as the slope is, is actually a little more painful, his sprained ankle sending twinges up into his leg. He’s really going to need to find or fashion a thing to carry berries in if he wants more of them, because he can’t keep doing this walk on an injury.

The onions are easier, though. When he reaches the patch again he’s long since finished the handful of berries and decides to dig up three or four bulbs to carry back to the cave. That way, he’ll have something to eat later, and he can easily carry them by their leaves.

He know’s he’s been missing other things he can eat, like the dandelions and clover he’s spotted everywhere, and his dad had shown him at least a dozen different wild plants he could harvest on their yearly camping trips, but most of them he thinks might need boiling first, so he plans to get back to them later if he needs to. Right now, the bulbs and berries will do.

Stiles makes it back to the clearing and the cave easily, the bright red of his hoody standing out starkly against the greys and greens of the forest, leading him right to the clearing once he spots it. He puts the onions in the cave, on a little shelf-like alcove a foot or so off the floor. He hadn’t spotted it earlier, but it comes in handy now.

He checks the hoody and shirt, finds them both dry. Instead of putting them on, though, he rolls them together and puts them in the cave. After a short rest, sitting in a patch of sun and letting the quiet roll over him, Stiles decides he needs a wash. He’s covered in dirt, his jeans are still caked and flaking with it, he’s pretty sure there’s blood in his hair, maybe on his shoulder… He needs a _bath_.

It’s a struggle to get back up again; he’s not hungry anymore, or at least, not as hungry, but he’s tired. He’s the kind of tired that is bone deep, leaving him wanting to sit and do nothing forever. He knows he can’t do that though. He’s already wasted away nearly 48 hours on panic attacks and passing out, and while the natural sleep of last night was good, helped, it was also too long and wasted time, Stiles having drifted off long before sundown.

He makes his way to the lake, not too far from the cave - in fact, the top of the rise above the cave looks over the water, and he’s pretty sure he could dive from it with no problem. He finds a small natural cove, a beach made of packed dirt and pebbles and dozens of large rocks. The rocks are big enough for him to sit on, some to climb on if his ankle wasn’t hurt.

Stiles leans his stick against one of the larger rocks and shrugs out of his t-shirt. His boots are a struggle, causing him to swear more than a bit as he tugs the left over his swollen ankle. His socks are disgusting, and it’s almost as hard a struggle to get his leather belt off. His jeans slide right off, though, flaking dried mud as they go.

He empties absolutely everything out of his pockets and puts it all to one side to look at later, and then drags his jeans, t-shirt and socks into the water with him. It’s a shock to his system after the heat of the day, almost icy.

“Shiiiitt, that’s cold,” he mutters. Thankfully, the ice cold water makes his ankle feel better, but the rest of him far less so. He grits his teeth and sits on a submerged rock in order to scrub the crap out of his clothes.

It takes a while, but it works, and when he’s finished he lays them all out on the larger rocks to dry in the sun. Then he heads back in, finds a deeper spot and dunks himself.

He comes back up spluttering, shivering, “Fuck!” and grabs a handful of grass from the nearby bank. He quickly uses the grass to scrub himself down, removing the accumulated dirt and sweat. Once he’s done, he sits on the submerged rock again, deliberately keeping his ankle in the cold water and takes stock of his body.

Stiles is literally _covered_ in bruises. A large part of his chest is bruised from the seat belt holding him in during the crash, the marks are mottled, layered, multi coloured and stark against his pale skin. He’s also bruised his right hip somehow, a large patch of color that he can’t give a reason to, and there’s a scattering of smaller bruises on all his limbs.

He can’t see his back, but it doesn’t feel bad, so he guesses it’s fine. His left shoulder, though, is a mass of bruising and a large, shallow looking scratch dashes down almost from the base of his neck onto his upper arm, the edges of it pink and puckered, though thankfully not hot. Considering his t-shirt is black, he’s not surprised he missed it. He scrubbs at it a little, to make sure there’s no dirt caught in it, though there’s ultimately little he can do if the water’s dirty. It bleeds a little, sluggish, before stopping.

He has some scratches on his lower legs, his forearms and hands, he guesses from fighting with the cockpit window. The memory makes his chest ache, his breath shorten, but he pushes it away, forces himself not to think about it. The gash in his palm, also from the window, is closed and not bothering him, but he makes sure it’s clean of mud and grit just in case.

And there _was_ blood in his hair. He finds a small wound, which he also can’t place, that bleeds again when he scrubs at his hair.

Altogether, along with the whiplash he’s pretty sure he’s got, he’s an aching mess and he’s astonished he managed to go foraging at all.

Suddenly, and terrifyingly, crushingly, he misses his dad. He tries to force back the fear, the pain, the loneliness, but he can’t. He wraps his arms around himself, gripping his upper arms with cold, tight fingers, still naked and sitting with his swollen ankle in the cold water and he cries, unselfconsciously and with his whole being.

\---

“Oh man, my _phone_.” Stiles cradles the now useless lump of technology in his hands like he’s lost a favorite pet, cooing at it pathetically. “All my _apps_ , my _games_ , my _photos_ … all my _everything_.” He flips it over and takes the back off, slides the battery out. Everything’s wet, unsurprisingly. Maybe, just maybe, if he can get everything dry, it might work again?

Just in case, after wiping them all down with his t-shirt, he puts all the separate pieces of the cell on a safe ledge on one of the bigger rocks, in a large patch of sunlight. “ _Gods_ , I hope that works.”

With that done, he goes through what he dug out of his pockets. He’s got quite a bit, and isn’t surprised, he has a habit of picking things up and pocketing them just in case they come in useful.

He has a half finished pack of gum, mint flavored; a slightly squashed Snickers bar, and a few more candies to add to the handful he found in his hoody.

His keychain, as usual, is cluttered. Keys to his own home, a key to Scott’s place, his high school locker key, the keys to his jeep. As well as the keys, he has his miniature compass and miniature torch, and a silly little embossed metal cartoon character.

In his wallet he finds a handful of change, thirty dollars in cash, a few receipts and a dozen cardboard loyalty stamp cards from various Beacon Hills cafes, diners and stores. He also pulls an elastic band out of one of the pockets, rolls it over his wrist for safe keeping. In one of the little plastic covered sections, the photograph he has of his parents is a little damp around the edges, but definitely saveable. He very carefully slides it out, and using a small pebble to weigh it down, puts it with his cell in the patch of sunlight to dry off.

He has no memory of picking up the palm sized notebook and pencil, but there they are.

The best thing though, is the swiss army knife his dad gave him at the airport.

He slides all the _thirty_ separate parts out and around to make sure it all works fine, and inspects each one. Two - no three - no four different blades, three different sized normal blades, one saw blade, a bottle opener, corkscrew, the horseshoe picker thing he personally thinks no-one will ever use, a nail file, tiny scissors, a toothpick and even a goddamn magnifying glass, _what the hell_. There’s even a miniature ruler and a screw driver and a couple things he has no idea what to name, let alone do with. The whole thing is a treasure trove of both usefulness and uselessness. His dad is a goddamn saint and it probably cost a fortune.

Alongside all of that, is the single sheet he stashed in his pocket of his Adderall, ever paranoid about losing all of them. There are nine pills left; there should be eight, but he skipped a day because of the crash and he took one this morning. Enough for nine more days, before he _needs_ to go find his luggage, lest he get too focused on something and forget to eat, or forgets he can get hurt and does something stupid, or any number of things that could happen without his meds. The rest of his meds are in his backpack, enough for a month long stay somewhere he can’t get to his usual doctor.

But. He’s going to be picked up soon anyway. Maybe a couple more days. The one sheet should be fine. _He_ should be fine, and he doesn’t need to worry.

He wraps his hand around the sheet, feels the edges of the plastic dig into the wound in his palm, and stares at the plane at the other end of the lake. He can barely see it, through the heat haze and distance, but he can see the that the nose of the craft has completely disappeared under the water, the broken middle section sticking out.

Miranda is still in there.

He shivers, hunches his shoulders, and turns away.

  
.tbc.


	5. Chapter 04

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry, that took a little longer than planned, life got in the way. 
> 
> Detailed, spoilery warning at the end notes
> 
> Thanks to Emeraldincandescent for the BETA :D

**Chapter 04**

*

Thinking of the pine needle bed he had slept on right after the crash, Stiles leaves his clothing to dry in the sun, after carefully stashing everything together under the t-shirt for safe keeping, and moves to the pine trees a little further back from the lake.

He’s barefoot and in only his boxers, but the sun is hot and the air warm, so he doesn’t worry for now. He’ll have to cover up sooner rather than later, but for now he just enjoys the sun on his skin. He pads carefully into the trees, leaning on the stick as he does, and searches for fallen pine branches. There’s not as many as he’d like, but enough, he thinks, for at least one layer of protection off the cold, clammy earth in the cave.

It takes him a lot longer than it would have if his ankle was healthy, but he manages to collect enough branches that he thinks he has a good start for the ‘mattress’ at least. When he’s moved it all to the cave he goes back down to the lake side and puts his t-shirt on. It’s not completely dry, but he can already feel the skin of his shoulders getting too hot. He burns easy and honestly, being a bit damp in the heat of the day is far better than burning badly without any way to alleviate the pain.

He carefully arranges the pine branches in the cave, selecting a space far enough back into it that he won’t get wet if it rains again, and that he’s mostly protected from any winds. It’s enough for the length of him, but after lying on it for a moment, decides it’s not comfortable enough, so he heads back out again.

While he’s building, he checks all the nooks and crannies of the cave, evicting any and all critters he finds as things he is very unwilling to share space with, especially at night. Thankfully, it’s mostly spiders and a few insects hiding amongst the leaf litter that he also removes. Beyond that, the cave doesn’t really have much in the way of hiding places, just a few ledges he can use as shelving, so he doesn’t worry too much.

After going back down to the lake for the knife, Stiles cuts down some fresh branches, enough for another, more fragrant layer on the bed, then he eyes the long grasses around the edge of the clearing. With a sigh, knowing this is just going to be more and more work, but also that it needs to be done if he wants to stave off exposure, he heads over and starts hacking his way through the grass.

Stiles shuffles along very slowly. He’s basically moving at a snails pace, on his hands and knees, because he can’t keep bending down or putting weight on his ankle. It’s good though, and he quickly has a sizable pile of long grass which, when he presses on it, actually feels like it’ll be comfortable to lie on. He does wonder about a way to keep it all together, though. But it’s only a temporary bed, so he puts the thought to one side.

As he crawls forward for his next slash at the grass, the hand he’s reaching out with tingles alarmingly, almost painfully. It shocks him so sharply that he falls back with a wordless cry. He looks back up just in time to see a large, thick snake slide out of the clump he had been about to grab. Triangular head, brown colouring with large darker brown patches along the spine and smaller on the sides, and an actual rattle - though it isn’t rattling - Stiles can’t name it, but he knows to keep away. The snake flicks its tongue at him and then slides away, disappearing in the direction of the trees.

Stiles tracks the snake with his eyes for a long moment, heart thumping, breath short, watching as it wends its way through the grasses and into the underbrush of the trees, before shaking himself out of it and staring at his hand instead. “What the _fuck_.”

His hand feels normal again, no tingling, no shock. It’s almost as if he has some inbuilt warning system for dangerous things. He thinks back on the red-berry tree, the way his hand had tingled alarmingly then, too.

“Maybe I’m _Spiderman_ ,” he mutters to the pile of grass at his side. It doesn’t respond.

He pushes the whole thing aside, like he’s doing with everything he can’t think about right now, and gets back to cutting the grass, paying far more careful attention to anything else that might try to kill him.

He quickly discovers that carrying large bundles of long grass is a pain in his ass. The whole process takes multiple trips and he still drops lumps of it as he does, having to go back and collect what he lost each time. However, it does make for a far more comfortable bed. He lies on it to rest for a few minutes and nearly drifts off, he’s so exhausted from all the work. But he can’t feel the cold earth below him anymore, and it’s soft enough that he doesn’t think he’ll wake with aching joints tomorrow.

As he sits down to eat another onion, reward and late lunch both, stomach grumbling at him at he does, Stiles contemplates the blackberry problem again. After all the movement he’s had to do today, his ankle is once again killing him, but he wants the sweetness of the berries to counteract the sourness of the onions. He can’t keep doing so much on his ankle as it is though; he needs to stop and let it rest, or he could do himself permanent damage.

He stares at the long grasses and thinks of the bulrushes growing in vast gently waving stretches at the lakeside, thinks of their long, sturdy leaves.

\---

The sun is slowly beginning to fall into the surrounding tree line by the time Stiles is happy with his work. He’s sitting on a rock just within the lake, his ankle in the cool water, surrounded by the many remains of his failed attempts at bulrush basket weaving. Turns out it’s harder than it looks on TV.

He’s been sitting still for so long, concentrating hard on the bulrush leaves, that fish have begun to swim nonchalantly around his foot. Occasionally one will tickle against his toes, or the underside of his foot, and then dart away when he twitches. He eyes them occasionally, wondering if he can catch one. It’s nice to know that there is that option, if it comes to it.

He’d made sure to pick a couple dozen of the nearly six foot long leaves, fighting to stay upright on the soft ground, getting mud up to his knees and arguing steadily and loudly with the plants themselves to give him some goddamn leaves already, because he knew he’d take ages to get something passable. Turns out _everything_ is harder than it looks on TV.

He’d started off way too complicated and had quickly given up on his first two attempts. After that, he’d tried to stay simple and had eventually figured out that if he made a basic cross shape, then layered another cross over it, and another over that, like a star, he could sort of tie them all together in the middle. Then he could weave a rough circle a few inches wide through the arms, then fold the rest of the leaves up and weave upwards to make sides. He sliced his fingers a couple times, (apparently the leaf edges are sharp, who knew?) but he just sucked on the small cuts and kept going, determined to have something workable for berry collecting tomorrow.

He holds the basket up to the light and contemplates it. It’s a mess, wonky weaving and too-big, uneven gaps and it still needs some sort of handle, he’s not even half way finished really, but _goddamn_ if he isn’t proud of himself. He actually _made_ a thing. A _useful_ thing. It’s taken all damn afternoon, and a billion failed attempts, but he still _made_ it. He grins at himself, “Awesome!” and gets back to work.

He’s still not finished when it starts to get a little too chilly, so he packs everything up, collects his now almost-dry clothing, and heads back to the cave, limping a little, leaning heavily on the stick, but still feeling pleased with himself. He pulls his dry shirt on over his t-shirt for a little extra warmth and sits down in the shrinking patch of sun to continue work on the basket.

He’s using one of the failed basket attempts to store all his things in, has tucked it away on the shelf-ledge near his new bed. It’s a relief to know everything’s in one spot, that it’s sort of protected now, and that’s absolutely the beauty of figuring this weaving thing out.

The cell phone had dried out nicely, but when he’d tried to turn it on, nothing had worked, which had left him feeling bereft and depressed, a little angry, but again, he pushed it aside and tried not to think about it.

Stiles is just figuring out that he can twist and roll a leaf together to make a vague-ish sort of rope like thing, when he hears the wolf howl again. He sits up straight, the twisted leaf dropping loose in his lap and looks around.

The howl rises up from somewhere deep in the trees behind him. Long, low, mournful and still lonely, still no answering howl. Shivering now with fear as well as the cold, Stiles picks everything up and moves into the cave, sitting himself on the bed, the long stick within easy grabbing distance in case he needs to defend himself. It’s not exactly warm, but there’s no breeze making it colder and though there’s no door, he feels somewhat better protected.

It takes a long while for him to get back to figuring out the handle, ears still strained for any noise that sounds big enough to be a wolf.

\---

“Hmm..?” Something’s tickling his foot.

Stiles shifts in his bed, half-waking, shivers a little. He must have kicked his blankets off.

Something tickles his foot again and he twitches, “Not yet,” he mumbles, “Sleeping.”

A great blast of warm, damp air cascades over his bare foot, coupled with a snorting snuffling noise and he wakes suddenly to cold air and near total darkness, drying grass beneath him instead of a sheet and mattress.

Something snorts at him again and he yelps, kicking out, terrified mind latching on to the howl he’d heard earlier in the evening. His heart races, his breath catches, he starts panicking. _Has the wolf come to eat him?_

He instantly regrets kicking out as pain shoots up his leg; he yells at the sharpness of it, the suddenness and he scrabbles back, away, shoulder blades pressing to the cold rock of the cave wall. Whatever was snorting and snuffling at him makes a grunting, almost yelping sound of it’s own and gives a sharp tug on his leg as it pulls away.  

He screams as the pain intensifies and realizes he _kicked_ a _fucking porcupine_ , that he’s got quills embedded in his leg, that the creature has tugged away leaving them behind. He listens, heart still racing, as the creature shuffles quickly away, abandoning him to the cave and the pain. After a long, tense moment, he leans forward, breath fast and investigates the damage to his leg.

There are three quills stuck in the side of his right calf. The pain pulses around them as his fingers knock against them and he grits his teeth against making any more noise, attracting anything else to his location. “Fuck, fuck fuck _fuck_ ,” he growls under his breath, trying to figure out what to do.

His fingers shake as he touches the quills, his whole body trembling slightly, probably adrenaline surging through his system. He swears again, and then again as he realizes they’re not just dug into his flesh, but also attached to his jeans, which will mean more work to remove them. These things are _barbed_ and he doesn’t have a doctor to go to.

He forces himself to calm down, knowing he needs to get them out before they work any deeper into his leg. If they do that, they could cause irreparable damage, he vaguely remembers someone saying if the spines are in too deep they have to be pushed _through_ , and he just can’t face that. Not alone. Not in the wilderness.

Just his fucking luck for kicking a goddam _porcupine_. It had probably thought there was something nice and easy to eat in here. “ _Fuck_.”

He takes a deep breath, “Ok. Ok, I can do this.” He presses the fingers of his left hand down around the first quill, grabs tightly to it with the other and, with another steadying breath as little shocks of pain ratchet through his leg, jerks as quickly as he can to get it out.

“SHIT!” He drops the quill and bends over, panting, then quickly forces himself to repeat the quick removal for the other two quills, before rolling to his side on the grass bedding and hugging his leg.

“Oh god, oh god, oh fuck, that _hurt_ ,” he talks quietly to himself as his heart rate begins to drop, barely aware of the tears running down his face again as he curls up. He’s too tired, too wiped out and too scared to do anything else, so he pulls his hoody over his shoulders for some extra warmth and tries not to think of home as he cries himself back to sleep again, leg throbbing with pain.

\---

Stiles scrubs at the quill punctures in his leg with clumps of grass and moss, roughly removing dried blood and the beginnings of scabs. It hurts, quite a bit, but he simply grits his teeth and works, making sure everything’s clean. He doesn’t remember anything about quills being particularly bad, beyond the tearing that can get inflamed, but he wants to be sure.

The three wounds are grouped fairly close together, and show a little tearing, but not too much. They hadn’t been deep enough to cause more than that, thankfully, his jeans apparently having protected him against the worst of it. He’s going to be limping on both legs for a while, but hopefully there won’t be any lasting damage.

When he’s done, the wounds are bleeding sluggishly, so he presses more dry moss to them and ties it in place with a spare bulrush leaf, pulls the leg of his jeans down over it as an extra measure to hold it in place. It’s not perfect, but he doesn’t have bandages, or a first aid kit. He glances briefly at the solid form of the plane on the other side of the lake, then turns away.

Leaning heavily on the stick again, Stiles pads slowly back to the clearing, eyes trained on the ground as he goes, looking for the small bulbous leafed plants he knows he can eat. He’s hungry and he’s sick of onions at this point. He picks a few handfuls of dandelion leaves as he passes small patches, chewing on a couple as he goes, shaking out flower heads as well to clear them of any insects before popping one in his mouth to see how it tastes. Weird, but not too bad, and if he remembers right, he can make tea from the roots? Though he’d need fire for that.

He pauses when he finds a patch of oval, ribbed and short stemmed leaves, and goes about picking the younger leaves and chewing on a couple of those, too. They taste weird, but not bad enough to spit out.

Once he’s back at the cave, he has a whole pile of edible wild plants. Not exactly satisfying, but while he’s fed up with onions and rationing the candy, they’ll do. He uses another of the failed basket attempts as a bowl, and mixes the leaves and flower-heads up together, a couple of torn up onion leaves thrown in for good measure. He misses burgers and steak and curly fries, really looks forward to the big celebratory meal he’ll order when he gets home. He’ll even let his dad have one. He can totally be magnanimous like that.

As he slowly works his way through what he forces himself to call a ‘salad’ in an attempt to make it more appetizing, grumbling a little under his breath at the odd mix of flavors, wishing he had some bacon bits to throw in with it all, Stiles contemplates the opening of the cave and the visitor he had the night before. He’s determined that he’ll be picked up in the next few days, so a door or cover or something to block the way into the cave hadn’t crossed his mind as being necessary, too much work for too little pay-off, considering he’ll be leaving soon anyway.

Now though? _Now_ he’s pretty sure he needs something to stop a repeat of last night’s issue.

He downs one more of his pills - which he mentally checks off as 8 days left - and eyes the larger stones on the path down to the lake, the fallen branches at the edge of the clearing. Maybe just a low wall would work? Probably won’t keep the worst out, but in this place, nothing will, so best to just keep out the smaller, annoying creatures any way he can.

After some thought, Stiles decides to tackle _that_ problem after he’s collected the berries. He’d rather sleep another unprotected night, than completely wear himself out and not have better food to eat.

\---

Stiles tries to make the trek into the woods for the berries, but wobbling on one still-swollen ankle, even if it is feeling better after the soaking all day yesterday, and limping on one quill-damaged calf has not only both his ankles aching in short order, but also his knees and even his hips. He leans so heavily on the stick that he also ends up with an aching shoulder, on top of the already present shoulder ache from the actual crash.

So, after realizing he’s just going to make things worse, Stiles decides to suffer the onions and ‘salad’ for at least one more day. He really doesn’t want to push it and end up with permanent damage. So, he’ll put off both the berry picking and the door crafting until tomorrow maybe. He figures he deserves a day of rest after figuring out how to make baskets, and getting stuck with quills.

Also, he could be picked up tomorrow, anyway, right? So, putting things off for another day should be fine. It could turn out to be wasted effort if he does it now. Especially considering he’s done so much already. And putting off the berries for another day isn’t such a big deal, he can always buy himself a packet of the things as a reward for eating the ‘salad’ when he gets home.

He takes himself to a patch of sunlight in the clearing and lies down. He’s not good at boredom, never has been, but napping he can do, and after all that strain trying to trek, he feels limp and noodly anyway. He stretches out - his leg twinges annoyingly, but not as painfully as it could - and relaxes, letting the warmth of the sun beat down on him as he closes his eyes.

A crack of blue lightning across a stormy sky jerks him awake.

He’s no longer in the sunny patch, the sun a few degrees lower. Stiles pushes up onto his elbows and looks around, heart beating fast, panting slightly as he lets reality reassert itself around him. He’s not in the air, there is no storm. He’s on the ground, he was only dreaming.

A light wind soughs through the trees, rustling the leaves and branches gently, clouds skid across the absurdly blue sky above him. The clearing is almost silent, in that way only truly isolated places can be.

He wipes a hand over his face and crawls over to the moved patch of light, seeking the lost warmth.

After lying still for a long moment, waiting for his heart beat to settle, listening to the birds and insects in the trees around him, he curls up slightly and closes his eyes again.

\---

Stiles gives up trying to sleep when the sun is skirting the tree tops, what he guesses is about three in the afternoon. Every time he closes his eyes a crack of blue lightning flashes behind his lids, startling him awake again. He puts it down to not keeping busy. When he’s busy, he can’t think, can’t drift; when he’s not busy, his brain just goes on and on, in ever more annoying circles. It’s not anything new to him, so he should have been expecting it, but after everything that’s happened, he didn’t think his brain chemistry would act up like this as well.

Like many things he is refusing to think about, he doesn’t acknowledge that it may not, in fact, be his brain chemistry.

He sits and thinks for a moment, runs his hands over his head, tries to think of something that he can occupy himself with for the rest of the day. ADD is a pain in his ass at the best of times, but it’s normally under control if he takes his meds on time. He’s not sure how the crash, and two days of skipping his meds and not taking them at the same time every day, and the radically changed diet - no caffeine! - his changed sleep patterns and just general all around changed-ness of his circumstances, has affected his symptoms.

He looks in the direction that he knows the plane is, knows where his month long prescription is, vigorously rubs his palms over his head and grits his teeth. He’s getting picked up soon. They’ll find him, they’ll take him home, and he can talk to the doc about his dose and how this might have affected things when he gets home.

He’ll treat this as an exercise in coping mechanisms. Or something.

He doesn’t want to do anything physically strenuous, doesn’t really feel like he could if he wanted to, so… After some thought, he decides he can try working on a list of what here he can eat.

He’s spent so much time reading wikipedia and random attached blogs and articles and encyclopedias, that he’s pretty sure he could survive for _months_ if he had to. Though he’s pretty sure he wouldn’t _want_ to.

The average person will get lost in wikipedia and wake up on a completely unconnected article and wonder where the time went. Stiles will start with wikipedia, read all the connected research papers and articles in the bibliography of the page, dig deeper and deeper, more articles, more research papers, then wake up on the latest scientific paper released on the same subject he started with, and will have memorized almost everything he read.

That’s another part of his ADD; _hyperfocus_. In his case, he tends to hyperfocus on research. And he researches everything and anything. Last summer, after Scott’s grandparents came to take him camping for a week, Stiles had gone into research mode to find anything and everything that Scott could be allergic to while camping, what could set his asthma off, so he would know what to steer clear of so he wouldn’t die. And that had lead to survival skills in a forest. Which had lead to lists of all the edible plants in North America, how to identify them, how to harvest them, how to cook them.

Which is why Stiles has been fine finding food to eat, so far.

He pauses and thinks of the little notebook and pencil tucked away into the wonky basket he’s keeping his things in. That will make it easier to make his list. With a grunt, he gets to his feet and shuffles to the cave. He takes down the basket and digs out the notebook and pencil, giving his dead cell a wistful look as he does.

Putting the basket back, he lowers himself to the bed, flips to a clean page and thinks.

\---

When Stiles finally looks back up again, he’s filled five pages of the little book with names and short descriptions of edible plants and the sun is dropping behind the trees, signalling the start of evening. Stiles tucks the notebook into a pocket and levers himself up. He goes for a piss in the area he’s designated for that, then trails slowly and carefully down to the lake, still limping and leaning fairly heavily on the stick to compensate.

He pauses at the lake edge, watches the fish swimming in the shallows for a long moment, then pulls the notebook out and adds them to the list of things he can eat here. He’s not sure which ones are in this lake, there seems to be quite a variety of shapes, sizes and colors. He also doesn’t know which ones could taste good, which could be awful. Not that he thinks he’ll really be here long enough to even _begin_ to think about how to start fishing out here, but still. He’s nothing if not thorough.

The call of a bird has him looking up. A flurry of feathers on the shore to the right and across from him has him laughing. He’s not sure what they are, but they look like some sort of miniature turkey with ugly heads, topped with a red crest. If he can figure out how to catch one of _those_ he’d be eating really well. He makes a note in the book, then, inspired, he jots down ‘rabbit’, ‘squirrel’ and, perhaps optimistically, ‘deer’. Though that last has him wondering if he’s northerly enough to worry about moose. He’s seen the video’s of rampaging moose on youtube, he’d rather not meet one.

Smiling to himself, Stiles tucks the book and pencil back in his pocket again and decides to walk for a while, to stretch out his muscles after a day of doing nothing, and get his ankle moving.

As he walks, still leaning on the stick, he looks carefully at everything around him, picking various leaves and flower-heads to nibble on as he goes. Some things are a bit peppery, some way too bitter and obviously need boiling, some things just taste like grass and after actively thinking about fishing, or catching one of the birds, he finds the leaves and flowers entirely unsatisfying.

He notes a small patch of saplings fighting for space where an old, large tree has fallen down; his brain starts ticking over the things he could do with them - a bow! fishing rod! spear! rods for a doorway! He could probably weave more bulrush leaves on those saplings, make an actual door, and not have to worry about lugging heavy rocks or logs to the cave entrance.

He shakes his head. It’s a lot of work again, still not something he feels he needs to do, considering he’ll be picked up before the week is out. But he makes mental note of where the patch of saplings is, nonetheless. He’s just practical like that.

Also, a bow would be a lot more helpful than a light-weight door. As he walks, his brain ticks over what he could use for the string.

After what feels like at least a half hour of hobbling along the lake edge, Stiles finally takes a breather. He stops and lowers himself to a fairly smooth rock and drops lightly back on to his elbows, tips his head back to look at the slowly coloring sky. Blue is fading into orange and pink, the few fluffy looking clouds tinted with it.

It takes him a while to realize what he’s seeing. When he does, he makes a small pained noise. 

A straight line of white, tinted gold and fuzzing out near the horizon is crossing the sky directly above him. A plane is flying over him. Far too high up, far too fast, far too small, to see him down here. It’s obviously an actual passenger plane, probably a big one, hundreds of people aboard, vacationers, business people, families, friends, strangers. Mothers, fathers, children...

Abruptly Stiles’ vision blurs over and he sits up, curling his knees into his chest, wrapping his arms around them, he bites back the sob bubbling up from his chest and hugs himself tighter. He feels suddenly so alone, so terrified. A crushing sadness overwhelms him in that moment, and he buries his face in his knees.

\---

 

*

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Stiles gets injured by a wild animal, but it's not life threatening, and he has to deal with it on his own. There is some mention of his ADD and how he deals with it.


End file.
